Exactly 10 years ago today North club singer Lorraine Crosby was topping the charts with American rocker Meatloaf.

His classic song I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), featuring Lorraine on female vocals, stayed at the number one spot for a total of seven weeks and has sold more than 600,000 copies in the UK alone.

As it rode high in the British charts, the public at large probably thought the Geordie lass had finally made it, but ironically, far from finding success, she and her partner Stuart had just hit rock bottom.

Lorraine recalls: "When Meatloaf was at number one, we had just been dropped from our record label and had to come home from the States with no money.

"I remember sitting in my sister's house in Cullercoats without two pennies to rub together and that song was at number one. Everyone must have been thinking I was making millions."

But nothing could have been further from the truth. Lorraine and Stuart had sold up everything to go to the States to seek their musical fortunes after meeting Meatloaf's songwriter Jim Steinman in New York.

"We'd sent him a demo of some songs we'd written including one called All Night To Know You which Bonnie Tyler recorded," says Lorraine. "Jim Steinman was raving about my voice and about the quality of the backing vocals and asked to meet us."

The couple flew out to the Big Apple on an all-expenses-paid four-day trip, staying in the swanky Mayflower Hotel on Central Park and Jim became their manager.

They decided if it was going to work they would have to move to the States so they sold up and rented a flat in Greenwich Village. But within months Jim had moved to LA, so the couple followed and moved to Hollywood.

"We were living in the Magic Hotel, where all Meatloaf's band were staying, until we could find somewhere to live. The drummer had gone home but had paid for his room so they let us have it free of charge."

Lorraine and Stuart survived LA despite living through the worst riots, floods and earthquakes the city had experienced for years.

"Our house was completely flattened by one earthquake," says Lorraine. "Luckily we had just come home. We had to keep returning every six months to get our visas renewed."

Jim did succeed in securing the couple a recording contract with MCA records, Meatloaf's label at the time. It was during a visit to the recording studios on Sunset Boulevard that Lorraine got her surprise big break.

"In we went and they were doing Anything For Love that day.

"So they said to me, `Would you mind going in and singing it with him?' I didn't get flustered. I just said, `Yeah, no problem'. In I went and sang it twice and I never thought anything more of it until six months later when I got a phone call saying, `Would you mind if we used your vocals?'"

So it was then that Lorraine saw off the likes of Cher, Melissa Etheridge and Bonnie Tyler, who had previously been lined up to provide the backing vocals.

"He just loved what I had done," says Lorraine.

It was undoubtedly a fantastic honour to sing with Meatloaf but unfortunately for Lorraine, it didn't catapult her to international stardom overnight nor did it bring in any cash.

In spite of the record doing so well she has never received a penny in royalties. Not that she's ungrateful. "That's not in the spirit in which it was done," she says. "It was a demo and I was doing guide vocals so there are no royalties. Meatloaf did get me a recording deal with MCA and we got to spend three and a half years in America on the strength of that."

But the deal didn't result in an album. She says: "It was that fatal thing that happens to artists. The guy who signed us got sacked when Meatloaf's album went #2 million over budget so we were dropped."

Lorraine and Meatloaf stayed in touch however and when he came over to Britain he invited her on stage in front of her home crowd at the Whitley Bay Ice Rink to sing their special number. It was hoped she would join him again at the Telewest where he was supposed to play last month but he had to cancel due to illness.

These days Lorraine and Stuart live in a beautiful house in North Shields, North Tyneside, which they have lovingly restored and the Lorraine Crosby Band is booked up for months ahead.

Bonny Tyler, she of Lost in France fame, is still a good mate and has been to stay with the couple in North Tyneside.

Lorraine is currently in talks with a TV production company who are putting together a film about gutsy Geordie women.

She's certainly a great example. Born in Walker, Newcastle, 43 years ago, she lost her father at two after he was killed in a car smash. Her mum, who has since died from cancer, was left to bring up Lorraine and her two sisters and brother.

"It was a terrible struggle on a widow's pension. She was a dinner lady and she grafted her whole life. I suppose I fended for myself since I was about seven."

At Walker Comprehensive she sang in school and church choirs and played the violin in the orchestra but didn't start singing until she was 20.

"I was watching Lene Lovitch on the telly - a singer from the eighties - and I said to my mam, `I could do better than that'".

Lorraine promptly took herself off to the guitar shop Rock City in Newcastle, now Sound Control, and searched the noticeboard for bands wanting singers. She joined several bands but none worked out so through the Bill Dixon agency she set up the five-piece band, Foxy.

Throughout the early eighties they toured the world playing to British and American servicemen.

"I suppose I was a peacetime Vera Lynn," she laughs.

"We played everything from Top 40 songs through heavy metal and American rock and gospel. If they asked for a song we would learn it and sing it for them."

Lorraine became a Forces sweetheart. "The lads used to queue up for pictures and we used to sell them for a dollar a shot. But I suppose we cheered them all up. They never saw any women so me going on stage with a little chamois leather on . . . well, they used to hoot and holler!"

It was back in Newcastle that Lorraine met Stuart Emerson, now 39, and he happened to be looking for a singer for his band. The two began song writing together and corny though it sounds, they're still making sweet music together.

The latest project is to produce an album of their own called `Don't Push Your Luck.' After five recording deals and nothing to show for it, it will be a dream come true for Lorraine.

She says: "Even if nobody buys it I really don't care. It's what I set out to do all those years ago . . . so if other people like it, that'll just be a really good bonus."